


Santa

by provocation



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Alien Culture, Alien Technology, F/M, M/M, Torture, who knows - Freeform, why are all aliens obsessed with tucker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-25
Updated: 2015-05-25
Packaged: 2018-04-01 03:27:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4004101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/provocation/pseuds/provocation
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>"I said I didn't want to talk about it."</i><br/>Inspired by canon up until episode 13x8. I really just wanted to write about what I thought the characters who were glossed over saw during their time in the beacon area. All ships are just implied.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Santa

**_only_ ** _a true warrior may enter. a being of great strength **and** mental clarity._

-

They were left here so long ago that they have been able to work on several different equations. If they were to share these equations they could explain the eradication of past civilizations and predict the rise and fall of future civilizations, but nobody will ever ask them about these things. If they are asked, they will not share. They have one sole purpose, which is to find the true warrior that their creators described in lore.

They know nothing of the goings-on on the planet above them. They are, in primitive terms, an artificial intelligence unit. Civil wars and great betrayals and secret forces mean nothing to them. Even the manipulation of their creator’s technology for good and evil beings alike means nothing to them.

They are only focused on their task, turning over the definition of _true warrior_ over and over in their central processing unit until it makes no sense at all and then more sense than anything else. If they were organic, they would be concerned that their sanity was slipping. But they are synthetic, a hologram projecting an image similar to one of their creators.

They wait patiently.

-

Something has changed. They aren’t sure what caused it, but all of a sudden the people who live nearby them (the dull buzzing at the back of their consciousness that they’ve been aware of but have never considered) stop fighting with one another and start looking for something. People with four-letter brands on their metal skin come and try to find out their secrets, and they stay where they are.

-

The white and purple one has a lovely voice, hitting all the right vocal notes. The timbre is pleasing. They record this information as passively as they would record the weather, were they outfitted with a thermometer module.

The aquamarine one…

Is that aqua? Teal, maybe?

The _aquamarine_ one has a very grating voice at first, but they adjust to hearing it. “Bored” is not exactly a word most commonly found in the vocabulary of a true warrior and they keep this in mind.

Everything changes from the second the aqua one whips out the key he’s using as a weapon. They _know_ this technology, as intimately as a feline knows its paws. A humming resounds over the base, and only the aqua one takes notice, the white and purple one transcribing something archaic and useless.

With as much anxiety as an AI can work itself into, they approach the aqua fighter. He’s so close to unlocking the console, and starting everything up. Maybe he is the true warrior. They appear, and if they had a corporeal body then every bundle of nerves would be sparking in excitement and anticipation.

He slashes through them with the key, their projection fading away into lines of code and then going away completely. It doesn’t hurt them, of course. What it does do is turn on _everything_.

They try to communicate with him, tell him what he’s just done and that he’s just begun something he probably could not comprehend whatsoever. The words all get lost in translation, however.

“What’s up?”

They don’t feel the need to lower themselves to that level, but they do leave the maps open once they’re gone. It’s about damn time.

-

JUNGLE TEMPLE is not the best descriptor for where the gateway lives. They’ve examined adjective after adjective and combed through nouns in the millions in their time here, and they’ve decided that a more apt descriptor would be _gateway’s home_ or _my home_ or _jungle home_. However, they doubt that all the creatures holding guns would use anything so intimate as _jungle home_ , so even though there is no religion applicable to these circumstances found in any theological archives, _jungle temple_ it is.

Not all the creatures, they chide themselves after the fact. All the potential true warriors. They like to think that they can already pick out who is not worthy without even entering their minds by just listening to their banter. The orange and green warriors hold interest, but they’ll need to undergo the arduous application process first— a process in which there is no room for compromise. The word _true_ has no uncertain definition.

The soldiers studying them don’t grab their attention as much as the orange one does, but one of them is the first one to be pushed through the gateway. Or kicked, actually.

-

“Where am I?”

_who are you._

“Where am I, please, I—honey? Is that you?”

“I’m leaving you, Daniel. I can’t live like this any longer.”

“No—please! This isn’t real! You can’t be real!”

“I’m not leaving because of what you’ve done to me. It’s because of what you’ve done to them.”

The projection of the man’s wife raises her hand, pointing to a large crowd. He recoils in horror at the sight of the corpses, recognizing their faces as people he’s killed in the war effort.

How hideously theatrical. They send him back through the gateway right before he starts crying, because, really, they don’t need to waste their time with that.

-

The green and orange ones enter at the same time, which is the biggest challenge that’s been presented to them in centuries. They thrive for it, running the two scenarios out at once. It seems fitting that these two entered only a few seconds from one another, seeing as they’re really more similar to each other than they would ever admit.

-

“Felix, come in. Felix, I’ve made it through the gateway. Equipment is malfunctioning. If you can hear this—”

_get a room. perhaps if you were as strong a soldier as you think you are you would not instantly call for assistance when entering this place._

The steel and green one doesn’t look scared, just confused, which is a good omen for him. “I don’t understand.”

 _who are you_.

They watch as this warrior—Locus, as he calls himself, interacts with the ghosts from his pasts. It’s severely less melodramatic but still disappointing. They’d thought—well. Clearly not.

-

“Damn, what is this place? Hey, Locus? Did you make it through or have I already won?”

This orange one reminds them of one of their creators, which provides them with a pleasant bolt of nostalgia. Which is a very interesting emotional response, seeing as there is _nothing_ pleasant about this warrior. And despite his predilection for avoiding lies, there is _nothing_ truthful about him either.

 _who are you_.

He pauses for a long moment, looking around himself.

“I don’t exactly kiss and tell. Who are…” He notices himself standing a few feet away on a higher level, and falls silent for a long moment. “… where the _fuck_ am I?”

What’s surrounding Felix is inverse to what Locus’ surroundings had been, but this is still, similarly, Felix’s defining moment. And his worst nightmare.

The Felix a few feet away is on his knees, a pistol pressed to his bare cheek. He spits out blood, and the motion carries none of the usual disdain that Felix brings about with himself. It’s a pathetic sight. The men who have him on his knees are from the other side of the war he’s fighting, and for some strange reason they’re all Aliens.

They can see Felix carefully watching himself, analyzing the situation for an out. Which means he’s failed to realize the point of this mental torture. There is no out. He has to watch himself be weak and vulnerable and lose all hope.

The projection of Felix shakes his head and opens his mouth to protest, and his captors laugh, whipping him with the pistol. One of them says, laughing aloud, “You still don’t get it, do you?”

“No—” Felix blurts out, and nobody pays his momentary slip of character any heed.

The one who’s got Felix on his knees hits him again with the gun. “No one’s coming to save you, asshole. You’re worth _nothing_ —I bet your side doesn’t even have men looking for you. You’re not important enough for a rescue mission.”

“What the fuck is this,” Felix demands, looking around himself desperately. “ _What the fuck is this_ —”

Another Alien steps forward. “You thought you were really fucking special, didn’t you? But you know what? You’re—“ He whips him. “—worth—” Again. “— _nothing_! At the end of the day, we are stronger than you and we’re faster than you, and you are a weak, weapon-less piece of shit with nobody who you can call for backup because nobody even likes you. We can kill you and you can’t do a damn thing to stop us!”

The rest of the captors cheer and jeer as Felix screams, bloodcurdling and breathless, and jumps forward to grab the gun. The noise of a bullet being fired rings out as Felix is kicked back through the gateway.

-

“I am a true motherfuckin’ warrior.”

They can’t pretend their feelings are passive about seeing the aqua one again.

They’re aware that auras are not quantifiable but something about the aquamarine warrior strikes them as very close to what they’re looking for, or what _someone_ is looking for at least. He was the one who found the key, activated the “temple”, and the first one of this whole group to see them, and once he enters the gateway that relays him to them and lets them look inside his mind, they know he has had past experiences with Aliens.

Intimate experiences.

As the aquamarine one looks around, they examine the contents of his mind, and are quite disappointed. He’s not what they’re looking for either. _a being of great strength **and** mental clarity. _ The _and_ is the important part of that equation, and this one’s mind is clear as mud, to use the old idiom.

But they like him enough that they figure it’s worth a go anyway.

 _who are you_.

Lavernius Tucker is his full name, and unlike Locus or Felix, it’s actually his _real_ name as well. They’ve never met anyone by the name Lavernius, and that’s really just another intriguing thing to add to the list of things about Tucker, right underneath his impregnation and right above his greatest fear.

Tucker’s greatest fear is failing others. His scenario involves a soldier named David, and an AI unit named Leonard, and a little kid named Charles who should be in school instead of an army, and loads of other people who all hate him or love him or just know him.

They watch him fail every one of these people.

Leonard is taken away from him and turned into Epsilon, and a firing squad executes three men in red armour, and by the time Caboose is gunned down by Locus Tucker has fallen to his knees in tears.

Cunningham and Rogers die before his very eyes and Palomo opens his mouth just long enough to tell Tucker he trusts him and he’s lucky to have the best Captain of them all before a bullet shatters his skull.

Strangely enough they sense no remaining trust between Tucker and Felix and yet Felix is there, shaking his head and looking away from Tucker, arms crossed. “You know, I really thought you could do this. I’m disappointed in you, Tucker.”

“No,” Tucker pleads, sobbing as Felix is replaced by Flowers and Flowers dies of an allergic reaction. “Please, no.” Butch’s corpse disappears to be replaced by steel armour with a yellow trim, and Tucker gets to his feet, shaking as he runs to Wash’s side. “No, God, please—not you—”

He reaches for Washington’s limp body and his arms pass through the projection. Tucker sits there in despair for a long moment, chest heaving. When he speaks again, his voice is shaking. “Okay. What. The _fuck_. Is happening.”

 _you have failed the trial_ , they inform him, because Tucker has been their favourite so far. _i am going to send you back to your friends now._

“Okay,” he replies, and they ignore the way his voice is trembling. “Can I have a minute to compose myself?”

 _you may._ Their creators taught them mercy, and they have never felt inclined to use it before now.

Tucker gets to his feet, and the bodies disappear from the ground. They stay silent as does he, and as they count to 60 seconds both AI and human gather their thoughts.

When he’s got 14 seconds to go, Tucker lets out a little laugh and says, “I guess I’m a lover, not a true warrior, huh?”

They dismiss him early without replying, and when they hear him lying to his friends, they do not pass judgement, just waiting for the next trial.

-

“Epsilon, you seeing this? Epsilon.”

He can hear Carolina’s voice but can’t see her anywhere, He can’t see anything. Everything is static around him and he hears buzzing voices fly by him, like people yelling out of passing cars. Carolina’s is one. He thinks he hears Tucker crying, maybe. And there’s someone he doesn’t recognize informing him that all this can’t be real.

_who are y------ you should not be here. why are you here._

**I CAME HERE WITH CAROLINA, DUDE. WHO ARE YOU?**

_this is unexpected._

And that’s all the warning Church has before he’s sent back through the gateway. He would have liked to see a black suit of armour—maybe some part of him might have been expecting that—but this isn’t the time for that.

-

“Epsilon, you seeing this? Epsilon.”

 _who are you_.

“I’m your true warrior.” Her voice is brimming with confidence, nearly overflowing. They like the looks of this one as well, and it’s not just because her armour reminds them of Tucker. They like this one well enough that they find themselves surprised at how quickly the cyan warrior fails.

The second the projection in black steps around the corner her heart rate doubles on the spot, but that’s nothing compared to how she reacts when she sees all her old friends and lovers and competition lined up, staring down at her.

“I thought I was going to have to fight Locus and Felix,” she says after a beat, refusing to look at York and then glancing back and only looking at York. “What is this?”

“Good to see you again, Carolina,” North says, and his voice is more accurate than York’s but he’s raising the scope of his sniper rifle, lining it up with her head. He always was a clean shot. Maine revs up his gun and blade and lets out a dark and angry growl that Washington doesn’t need to be here for Carolina to translate. Wyoming levels his pistol with her heart.

The only one who isn’t looking over at her is CT, who’s facing away, disappointed in her. _Connecticut_ is disappointed in _her_. How the tables have turned.

“I don’t want to be here,” she decides. She’s smart; she knows what they’re going to do. She’s seen this in nightmares before, but it’s never been so real, even with this motion blur all around them. She knows they’re all going to blame her for everything. For Sigma, for leading them to their deaths, for abandoning York.

She glances at his helmet and he doesn’t say a thing and she misses him so badly she could cry.

“That’s just too bad,” Tex says, cracking her knuckles. Carolina notices she’s blocking the door. “Because I’m gonna keep you here.”

Theta flickers to life on North’s shoulder. “Carolina, why did you let Maine rip me out of North’s skull and force me into the Meta?”

Carolina _assiduously_ ignores the AI, running at Tex with a determination to lay her out. Tex knocks her back, and Carolina’s head is reeling as a sudden pain rings out in her right ear. “Stupid bitch,” South says, as North aims his rifle and asks in that same jovial, paternal tone, “Hey, South, do you think you would have lived if Carolina hadn’t been our team leader?”

South replies with a little laugh, “I sure as hell wouldn’t have helped kill you,” and it’s all so wrong and Carolina can taste blood in her mouth as she fights Tex, but Tex blocks every punch, beating her back from the door.

“Maybe if Carolina hadn’t been such a stubborn bitch we could have lived together someday,” York says. “You know, I always wanted babies with green eyes.”

“ _York_ ,” she says, and Tex uses the moment of distraction to hit her in the ribcage. Carolina screams, and Wyoming, South, and Tex laugh as York and North make little _tsk_ ing noises.

“It’s all your fault, all this,” CT finally says, turning to look down at her. “Everything.”

Carolina bows her head, collapsing to the ground. The Freelancers vanish, one by one until Tex is the only one standing above her, and then the door vanishes, and she’s sent back through the gateway.

“I said I don’t wanna talk about it.”

They’re only slightly disappointed in her.

-

They’ve waited longer than any other AI in existence for the outcome of the successful trial, and not once had they expected this.

_i’ve increased the gravity tenfold since you’ve arrived._

“What’s a tenfold?”

_you---------------- haven’t noticed?_

“What a tenfold is? Yeah, no, I- I don’t know, you’re the one who brought it up.”

They have never encountered a mind as clear as the one of Michael J. Caboose.

 _hmmm_. _then it seems that you are----_

They look down at this Spartan, decked out in blue armour with scratches all over it. This warrior who has killed the leader of his own team in cold blood but still shows enough emotion to call a firearm his pet and name it Freckles. This fighter who’s stronger than perhaps anyone else on the team, and has a natural affinity for technology. Somehow, even though this makes no sense at all, it makes more sense than anything else.

_a true warrior._

“… Neat.”

**Author's Note:**

> Miles can go wherever the fuck he wants with the show and with Santa but this is just an interpretation of what's happening now? Obviously it could/will become OOC the more we learn about... Santa. And so you should probably take into consideration that it's mostly headcanons and they could completely be canon divergent and I could be getting the character of ... Santa ... wrong. I cAN'T BELIEVE CABOOSE NAMED THE AI SANTA.
> 
> Thanks to [Tucker](http://everybodyhereknowsabouttucker.tumblr.com/) and [Seeker](http://fasterthxnyou.tumblr.com/) for ideas for their parts, and [Felix](http://deceptivemercenary.tumblr.com/) for ideas/inspiration as well.


End file.
